Wild and Wonderful Donegal

If you’re reading this, you’re on the cutting edge. Whether you know it or not, you are being let in on a cultural secret, nay phenomenon. Count yourself lucky to be one of the few people worldwide who is getting it from the horse’s mouth: Donegal, my native land, is an undiscovered gem of natural beauty. “How beautiful?” says you. Only beautiful and unique enough to garner the attention of National Geographic. Did you hear what title that August publication bestowed upon Donegal last year? Only the “coolest spot in the world.” Not just Ireland. Not just Europe. But the whole world.

I come from Donegal – the Inishowen peninsula. It is the most northerly point (Malin Head) of Ireland. It is far off the beaten track, which might make me wonder, should I really be telling the whole world about us? Might it make more sense to keep it to ourselves? It might. After all, the reason why it is viewed in such an exalted position is due to its wild remoteness. Millions of visitors with cameras would most likely get in the way, but that’s how we are in Donegal. We’re open and inviting and we always have time to chat. We know there’s another world out there, many of us have even visited it, but it doesn’t change who we are.

Speaking of other worlds, the Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield, took photos from space of Donegal, more specifically the Inishowen peninsula. I was up in Inishowen, in Malin Head, writing my memoir when the photos started to first appear. Astronaut Hadfield became an overnight hero for the Irish. It is ironic when you consider the fact that the area has existed since the beginning of time, yet it took a man in a space ship to leave the earth behind and photograph the natural beauty from above to make such an impact.

3 Comments

Carmel Hartnett
on April 19, 2017 at 12:45 pm

Lovely pictures of the lonely landscape. The images make me think of all the people who had to immigrate and leave their hearth and family behind. I think that parting resides in our soul and looking at these pictures makes me sad but grateful at the same time. Donegal is simaler to Mayo.

It’s true, Carmel – the two counties aren’t all that dissimilar – both are wild and rugged as are their people.
Foreign travel most definitely resides in our soul…I just wrote an article for a couple of Irish publications and I drew
that very same conclusion. I think it a safe bet to say that any of us who have ever left Ireland for any prolonged period of time,
have never stopped missing her wild beauty. As penned James Orr, the Bard of Ballycarry; “The savage loves his native shore.”